Sorry in advance. I've posted something similar to this before but for some reason didn't get much love and Reddit doesn't seem to allow ANY cheating posts which is a shame since devs and the team are active there. First part is just about regular players the hacker juicy stuff is second paragraph forward.
So one of the biggest issues I've seen with ranked, well two biggest is there is NO level restriction. In itself doesn't seem harmful until you get into the nitty gritty of it all. Ranked is suppose to be a MORE competitive scene is it not? Then why is that you can be level 10 and jump right in? I can bet my emo pants from 2005 that not a damn soul after playing this game for 10 levels is ready to jump into ranked matches. This needs to be implemented like other games and require a much higher level cap. I understand you want everyone to feel welcomed and what not but it's ranked the whole point is that your suppose to work to get there and then work to climb the ladder once your there. This is just open to whoever willy nilly downloads the game which is probably one of the dumbest ideas I've seen so far in any competitive game and I've seen quite a few things.
Another thing this would ALSO help with is hackers. It's obviously a free game (duh) so once (if) they do get banned they can quite literally be back into ranked within maybe 20-40 minutes from the time to create a new account to hitting level 10. Obviously a bit exaggerated but it doesn't take very long to hit level 10. It's close to the hourish mark I'd say give or take (with a hacker probably exactly or less than that.) Adding the level restriction makes it so they have to at least hit level X to join. This allows a lot more time to catch them and get them banned before they join into the ranked/competitive community of the game and ruin it and everyone quits as usual until it's fixed up a bit. It just works for both sides of the coin here not sure why it wasn't thought of from the very beginning.
I've posted this on the actual forums which was probably my fault since more people are active here and see things here. Now for the prime membership this I don't expect as much for multiple reasons but nonetheless here it goes. I'm sure most or quite a few of you guys know about CSGO (Counter-Strike Global Offensive) before they ruined what they had going for a bit they had a Prime membership that required a phone number (the game itself was already $15) this helped tone down the hackers albeit not very well since numbers are easy to get a hold of via apps. However using this model could probably charge a one time fee for a prime membership + add phone number <---this part I know you guys are already working on but this part has easy work arounds so it isn't the most solid part but it does help. At least this way you guys can profit off the hackers if they choose to keep making new accounts. Obviously with ANY of this implemented there would have to also be massive ban waves either right before or after it goes into affect just to lower the overall number from the start and work from there. At the beginning you really have to hunt them down like dogs which will kinda ruin it for most of them because not many are going to keep dishing out that money.
This unfortunately leaves the problem of them still being all over the casual games and with level restrictions if you added those would be a problem for some new players. But since you guys are working on something to ban off red flags soon I figure it wouldn't be the worst case scenario considering the current situation.
TLDR: Add level restrictions for ranked to prevent completely new players joining they should be practicing on casual more than 10 levels. Also stops hackers from creating new accounts and jumping into ranked almost immediately. Prime+phone number to further improve the hacking situation overall.
